EA for Jews will be running another round of the EA and Judaism Intro Fellowship this July! It will be a 4-week virtual program you can do alongside school or work that explores the core ideas of effective altruism and their relationship to Jewish tradition, texts, culture, and history. For any questions, reach out to them at Shalom@eaforjews.org or schedule a 1-1 with Hillel, their Director. The deadline to apply is Sunday, 25June. Learn more and apply here.
Early-career, student, and academic opportunities
Probably Good is accepting applications for their new 1-on-1 advising service! They’re excited to help people brainstorm career paths, evaluate options, plan next steps, and connect with relevant people and opportunities. Learn more and apply.
Lightspeed Grants provides fast funding for projects that help humanity flourish among the stars. The application is minimal and grant requests of any size ($5k - $5M) are welcome. Budget is $5M for this grant round, and (probably) more in future rounds. Opt into their venture grants program to get a response within 14 days (otherwise get a response in 30-60 days, around the start of August). Apply here by 6 July. The application should only take 1-2 hours. If you want to join as a funder, send them an email at funds@lightspeedgrants.org.
Magnify Mentoring is accepting mentee applications until 25 June from women, non-binary, and trans people of any gender who are enthusiastic about pursuing high-impact career paths. On average, mentees and mentors meet once a month for 60-90 minutes. Through their Slack and multiple networking events, they offer mentees access to a broader community with a wealth of professional and personal expertise. You can find out more here and applyhere.
In the second part of Anima International’s latest campaign urging the Polish Minister of Agriculture to support the EU ban on cages in animal farming, the Polish team used Mothers’ Day to release a new video campaign fronted by six well-known female influencers. The campaign has been viewed around 1.3 million times on Instagram and resulted in over 14,392 new signatures.
Anima International also released a new undercover investigation from pig farms in Poland with the same goal in mind. The investigation was published in cooperation with one of the leading opinion-forming media outlets in the country.
Animal Charity Evaluators
ACE has an updated strategic plan! Over the last few years much has changed, including an expanded animal advocacy movement, an evolved EA community, changes at ACE itself, and more research is being done into what animals need. ACE is grateful for the contributions of animal advocates, peers, critics, and funders as they continue to grow and learn.
ACE reviewed its Fiscal Year 2022-2023. It added 5 hires (including new leadership staff), conducted evaluations of 12 charities, and released its annual donation recommendations. Despite the challenging fundraising environment, ACE distributed $1.7M in grants to its Top and Standout Charities, and $910k in Movement Grants. You can also read their separate post on their charity feedback from their 2022 evaluations.
Centre for Effective Altruism
Charlotte Darnell recently accepted a role on the Community Health and Special Projects team to help with interpersonal problems in the community alongside Catherine Low and Julia Wise. Charlotte comes to them from CEA’s Events Team.
As a reminder, if you’ve experienced anything you’re uncomfortable with in the community, you can contact Catherine, Julia and Charlotte via this form.
Charity Entrepreneurship
Charity Entrepreneurship has announced the launch of four new nonprofit organizations through their February/March 2023 Incubation Program: Animal Policy International—Ensuring animal welfare standards are upheld in international trade policy; Ansh—Empowering mothers to save newborn lives by building healthcare capacity for the adoption of Kangaroo Care; Healthy Futures Global—Preventing mother-to-child transmission of syphilis through testing and treatment, and HealthLearn—Providing the world’s best online training to health workers in developing countries. Two more organizations got started during the program, but are not officially incubated by CE: The Mission Motor—Building a more evidence-driven animal cause area by training and supporting organizations to use monitoring and evaluation to improve the impact of their interventions, and Upstream Policies—Driving responsible fishing practices by championing bait fish prohibition.
Faunalytics
Faunalytics has released their latest resource: Invertebrate Fundamentals. This data-filled series of interactive infographics is the eighth edition of the Faunalytics Fundamentals collection, which takes a deep dive into a particular topic area in animal protection. The new resource looks at the vast world of invertebrates — a category of animals that includes everyone from fruit flies to octopi — and explores just how much we don’t know about them, and makes the case for their prioritization.
Faunalytics also released a new study in partnership with Sentient Media: Animal Agriculture Is The Missing Piece In Climate Change Media Coverage. This report analyzed recent climate articles from top U.S. media outlets to determine how often the media makes the connection between animal agriculture and climate change when reporting on climate issues, and how reporting on animal agriculture in relation to climate change misses the mark.
Fish Welfare Initiative
FWI recently published their new careers page, which includes rolling/common applications for three types of positions: Data Collectors (in India), Field Managers (in India), and International Knowledge Workers (hybrid).
Of particular interest to EA job-seekers may be the International Knowledge Worker category of roles, which would be a good fit for an EA-minded generalist who’s passionate about reducing animal suffering and enjoys travel. You can add your name to their short expression of interest for the role category.
GiveWell published a report on the evidence for chlorine vouchers, in which households are given coupons to exchange for chlorine that they can use to purify water at home. Chlorine vouchers aim to increase the use of chlorination and reduce waste compared with programs that distribute chlorine directly to households. GiveWell has been investigating vouchers as part of its broader research and grantmaking on water treatment, and thinks they could be a promising additional tool for reducing deaths from waterborne disease.
Giving Green
Giving Green hosted a webinar on beyond-net-zero corporate climate strategies, featuring speakers from the climate teams of Microsoft, Stripe, Google, and Mapbox. The webinar can be viewed here. Businesses interested in 1-1 guidance from Giving Green should reach out here.
Giving What We Can
Giving What We Can published and released a few new pieces of content in the past month including: a new version of our Effective Giving Guide for 2023 including new design and updated content, a blog post in the wake of the statement from the Center for AI Safety, and a page on helping animals effectively after the publication of Animal Liberation Now.
The Humane League
On May 11th, The Humane League (THL) celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Proposition 12, a landmark California law protecting millions of egg-laying hens, mother pigs, and calves raised for veal. As an intervening party in the case, The Humane League fought for Prop 12 at every level.
The Open Wing Alliance (OWA) has launched a flagship campaign urging Jollibee Foods Corporation to stop profiting off tortured hens. This marks our coalition’s first global campaign against a company headquartered in the Philippines and will play a significant role in eradicating battery cages in Asia (where ~68% of eggs are produced).
The OWA also released their global cage-free fulfillment report, a powerful indicator of the status (and success!) of the cage-free movement. This year, the report found that the vast majority (89%) of companies with 2022 cage-free pledges have completed their transitions.
Legal Priorities Project
Christoph Winter was interviewed for the Future Generations Policy Leader Toolkit, where he discussed examples of protection of future generations (such as through courts, constitutional reform, and legislation), foresight and experimentation in policymaking, and advice for policy leaders. You can listen to the recording or read the transcript.
Legal Priorities Project researchers and affiliates published several papers:
Research Affiliate Noam Kolt co-authored a paper on “Model Evaluation for Extreme Eisks” with co-authors at Google Deepmind, Centre for the Governance of AI, Centre for Long-Term Resilience, OpenAI, Anthropic, Alignment Research, and others.
Kevin Frazier joined the LPP team as a Summer Research Fellow. Program details and application materials will be published in June.
Open Philanthropy
Open Philanthropy published its annual review, with updates on grantmaking and research over the past year, and plans for the coming year. Some highlights:
Open Phil recommended over $650 million in grants — the most of any year to date.
Open Phil hired its first program officers for three new focus areas: EA Community Building with a focus on global health and well-being, Science and Innovation Policy, and Global Health R&D.
In 2023, Open Phil will revisit how to allocate funding between its longtermist and global health and wellbeing portfolios.
Probably Good
This month, Probably Good renovated their website and opened up applications for their 1-on-1 career advising service! If you’re a student searching for the right path or an experienced professional seeking a purpose-driven opportunity, Probably Good can help you brainstorm career paths, evaluate options, and plan next steps. They can also connect you with relevant people and opportunities. Apply now to chat with their team.
Along with the site update, Probably Good also published a lot of new content – including a completed career guide, more career path profiles, degree-specific content, and updated core concept articles. If you have any questions about the career advising application process or want to leave feedback on their site, feel free to reach out at hello@probablygood.org.
Rethink Priorities (RP)
The Existential Security team (XST)—formerly the General Longtermism Team (GLT)—has updated their 2023 strategy (see here). Recent RP reports include:
EA Organization Updates: June 2023
We’re featuring some opportunities and job listings at the top of this post. Some have pressing deadlines.
You can see previous updates on the “EA Organization Updates (monthly series)” topic page, or in our repository of past newsletters. Notice that there’s also an “org update” tag, where you can find more news and updates that are not part of this consolidated series.
These monthly posts originated as the “Updates” section of the EA Newsletter. Organizations submit their own updates, which we edit for clarity.
(If you think your organization should be getting emails about adding their updates to this series, please apply here.)
The organization updates are in alphabetical order.
Opportunities and jobs
Opportunities
Consider also checking opportunities listed on the EA Opportunities Board.
General-audience events
EAGxNYC will take place at Convene, 225 Liberty St., 18–20 August 2023. Applications are still open and will close 31 July.
EA for Jews will be running another round of the EA and Judaism Intro Fellowship this July! It will be a 4-week virtual program you can do alongside school or work that explores the core ideas of effective altruism and their relationship to Jewish tradition, texts, culture, and history. For any questions, reach out to them at Shalom@eaforjews.org or schedule a 1-1 with Hillel, their Director. The deadline to apply is Sunday, 25 June. Learn more and apply here.
Early-career, student, and academic opportunities
Probably Good is accepting applications for their new 1-on-1 advising service! They’re excited to help people brainstorm career paths, evaluate options, plan next steps, and connect with relevant people and opportunities. Learn more and apply.
Lightspeed Grants provides fast funding for projects that help humanity flourish among the stars. The application is minimal and grant requests of any size ($5k - $5M) are welcome. Budget is $5M for this grant round, and (probably) more in future rounds. Opt into their venture grants program to get a response within 14 days (otherwise get a response in 30-60 days, around the start of August). Apply here by 6 July. The application should only take 1-2 hours. If you want to join as a funder, send them an email at funds@lightspeedgrants.org.
Magnify Mentoring is accepting mentee applications until 25 June from women, non-binary, and trans people of any gender who are enthusiastic about pursuing high-impact career paths. On average, mentees and mentors meet once a month for 60-90 minutes. Through their Slack and multiple networking events, they offer mentees access to a broader community with a wealth of professional and personal expertise. You can find out more here and applyhere.
Job listings
Consider also exploring jobs listed on “Job listing (open).”
Alignment Research Center
Theoretical researchers (Berkeley (preferred) / remote, $150k–400k)
Centre for Effective Altruism
Content Specialist (Remote / Oxford / Boston / other, £54.6k -£67.3k / $96.2-$124.k, apply by 19 July)
Fish Welfare Initiative
International Knowledge Worker (Hybrid / India / China)
Field Manager (India, INR 30k–50k per month)
Founders Pledge
Assorted roles in communications, research, operations, and more (Remote / London / San Francisco)
GiveWell
Project Manager (Remote / Oakland, CA, $90.6k - $98k)
Operations Specialist (Remote / Oakland, CA, $90.6k - $98k)
Donor Relations Associate (Remote / Oakland, CA, $90.6k - $98k)
Assorted research positions (Remote / Oakland, CA)
Open Philanthropy
IT Lead (Remote within US, $138k, apply by 25 June)
Research Analyst for Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness (Hybrid/DC, $122k-$137k)
Operations Associate—Biosecurity & Pandemic Preparedness (DC, $114.2k)
Wild Animal Initiative
Executive Assistant (Remote / US or UK, $50.6K - $61.8K, apply by 9 July)
Organization Updates
80,000 Hours
This month, 80,000 Hours released a blog post summarising the changes it made to some of its advice after the collapse of FTX, a blog post from Ben Todd on moderation in doing good, and an update to its career review of information security in high-impact areas.
On The 80,000 Hours Podcast, Rob interviewed:
Ajeya Cotra on accidentally teaching AI models to deceive us
Elie Hassenfeld on two big-picture critiques of GiveWell’s approach, and six lessons from their recent work
Joe Carlsmith on navigating serious philosophical confusion
Anima International
Pushing for the EU ban on cages
In the second part of Anima International’s latest campaign urging the Polish Minister of Agriculture to support the EU ban on cages in animal farming, the Polish team used Mothers’ Day to release a new video campaign fronted by six well-known female influencers. The campaign has been viewed around 1.3 million times on Instagram and resulted in over 14,392 new signatures.
Anima International also released a new undercover investigation from pig farms in Poland with the same goal in mind. The investigation was published in cooperation with one of the leading opinion-forming media outlets in the country.
Animal Charity Evaluators
ACE has an updated strategic plan! Over the last few years much has changed, including an expanded animal advocacy movement, an evolved EA community, changes at ACE itself, and more research is being done into what animals need. ACE is grateful for the contributions of animal advocates, peers, critics, and funders as they continue to grow and learn.
ACE reviewed its Fiscal Year 2022-2023. It added 5 hires (including new leadership staff), conducted evaluations of 12 charities, and released its annual donation recommendations. Despite the challenging fundraising environment, ACE distributed $1.7M in grants to its Top and Standout Charities, and $910k in Movement Grants. You can also read their separate post on their charity feedback from their 2022 evaluations.
Centre for Effective Altruism
Charlotte Darnell recently accepted a role on the Community Health and Special Projects team to help with interpersonal problems in the community alongside Catherine Low and Julia Wise. Charlotte comes to them from CEA’s Events Team.
As a reminder, if you’ve experienced anything you’re uncomfortable with in the community, you can contact Catherine, Julia and Charlotte via this form.
Charity Entrepreneurship
Charity Entrepreneurship has announced the launch of four new nonprofit organizations through their February/March 2023 Incubation Program: Animal Policy International—Ensuring animal welfare standards are upheld in international trade policy; Ansh—Empowering mothers to save newborn lives by building healthcare capacity for the adoption of Kangaroo Care; Healthy Futures Global—Preventing mother-to-child transmission of syphilis through testing and treatment, and HealthLearn—Providing the world’s best online training to health workers in developing countries. Two more organizations got started during the program, but are not officially incubated by CE: The Mission Motor—Building a more evidence-driven animal cause area by training and supporting organizations to use monitoring and evaluation to improve the impact of their interventions, and Upstream Policies—Driving responsible fishing practices by championing bait fish prohibition.
Faunalytics
Faunalytics has released their latest resource: Invertebrate Fundamentals. This data-filled series of interactive infographics is the eighth edition of the Faunalytics Fundamentals collection, which takes a deep dive into a particular topic area in animal protection. The new resource looks at the vast world of invertebrates — a category of animals that includes everyone from fruit flies to octopi — and explores just how much we don’t know about them, and makes the case for their prioritization.
Faunalytics also released a new study in partnership with Sentient Media: Animal Agriculture Is The Missing Piece In Climate Change Media Coverage. This report analyzed recent climate articles from top U.S. media outlets to determine how often the media makes the connection between animal agriculture and climate change when reporting on climate issues, and how reporting on animal agriculture in relation to climate change misses the mark.
Fish Welfare Initiative
FWI recently published their new careers page, which includes rolling/common applications for three types of positions: Data Collectors (in India), Field Managers (in India), and International Knowledge Workers (hybrid).
Of particular interest to EA job-seekers may be the International Knowledge Worker category of roles, which would be a good fit for an EA-minded generalist who’s passionate about reducing animal suffering and enjoys travel. You can add your name to their short expression of interest for the role category.
GiveWell
GiveWell’s co-founder and CEO, Elie Hassenfeld, was interviewed on the 80,000 Hours podcast about newer areas of GiveWell’s research—such as malnutrition treatment, water chlorination, kangaroo mother care, and clubfoot treatment—plus critiques of GiveWell’s approach from the Happier Lives Institute and others.
GiveWell published a report on the evidence for chlorine vouchers, in which households are given coupons to exchange for chlorine that they can use to purify water at home. Chlorine vouchers aim to increase the use of chlorination and reduce waste compared with programs that distribute chlorine directly to households. GiveWell has been investigating vouchers as part of its broader research and grantmaking on water treatment, and thinks they could be a promising additional tool for reducing deaths from waterborne disease.
Giving Green
Giving Green hosted a webinar on beyond-net-zero corporate climate strategies, featuring speakers from the climate teams of Microsoft, Stripe, Google, and Mapbox. The webinar can be viewed here. Businesses interested in 1-1 guidance from Giving Green should reach out here.
Giving What We Can
Giving What We Can published and released a few new pieces of content in the past month including: a new version of our Effective Giving Guide for 2023 including new design and updated content, a blog post in the wake of the statement from the Center for AI Safety, and a page on helping animals effectively after the publication of Animal Liberation Now.
The Humane League
On May 11th, The Humane League (THL) celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Proposition 12, a landmark California law protecting millions of egg-laying hens, mother pigs, and calves raised for veal. As an intervening party in the case, The Humane League fought for Prop 12 at every level.
The Open Wing Alliance (OWA) has launched a flagship campaign urging Jollibee Foods Corporation to stop profiting off tortured hens. This marks our coalition’s first global campaign against a company headquartered in the Philippines and will play a significant role in eradicating battery cages in Asia (where ~68% of eggs are produced).
The OWA also released their global cage-free fulfillment report, a powerful indicator of the status (and success!) of the cage-free movement. This year, the report found that the vast majority (89%) of companies with 2022 cage-free pledges have completed their transitions.
Legal Priorities Project
Christoph Winter was interviewed for the Future Generations Policy Leader Toolkit, where he discussed examples of protection of future generations (such as through courts, constitutional reform, and legislation), foresight and experimentation in policymaking, and advice for policy leaders. You can listen to the recording or read the transcript.
Legal Priorities Project researchers and affiliates published several papers:
Eric Martínez published a paper on “Re-Evaluating GPT-4′s Bar Exam Performance.”
Research Affiliate Noam Kolt co-authored a paper on “Model Evaluation for Extreme Eisks” with co-authors at Google Deepmind, Centre for the Governance of AI, Centre for Long-Term Resilience, OpenAI, Anthropic, Alignment Research, and others.
Research Affiliate Jonas Schuett co-authored the paper “Towards Best Practices in AGI Safety and Governance: A Survey of Expert Opinion”.
John Bliss attended the Law & Society conference and presented a paper on generative AI and the future of law. Matthijs Maas attended the workshop “Pluralisms in Existential Risk Studies” organized by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and Future of Humanity Institute.
Kevin Frazier joined the LPP team as a Summer Research Fellow. Program details and application materials will be published in June.
Open Philanthropy
Open Philanthropy published its annual review, with updates on grantmaking and research over the past year, and plans for the coming year. Some highlights:
Open Phil recommended over $650 million in grants — the most of any year to date.
Open Phil hired its first program officers for three new focus areas: EA Community Building with a focus on global health and well-being, Science and Innovation Policy, and Global Health R&D.
Open Phil nearly doubled the size of its team.
In 2023, Open Phil will revisit how to allocate funding between its longtermist and global health and wellbeing portfolios.
Probably Good
This month, Probably Good renovated their website and opened up applications for their 1-on-1 career advising service! If you’re a student searching for the right path or an experienced professional seeking a purpose-driven opportunity, Probably Good can help you brainstorm career paths, evaluate options, and plan next steps. They can also connect you with relevant people and opportunities. Apply now to chat with their team.
Along with the site update, Probably Good also published a lot of new content – including a completed career guide, more career path profiles, degree-specific content, and updated core concept articles. If you have any questions about the career advising application process or want to leave feedback on their site, feel free to reach out at hello@probablygood.org.
Rethink Priorities (RP)
The Existential Security team (XST)—formerly the General Longtermism Team (GLT)—has updated their 2023 strategy (see here). Recent RP reports include:
How can we fix indoor air contamination? (Associate Researcher Jam Kraprayoon and colleagues from 1Day Sooner)
What do people in the U.S. think about AI? (Principal Research Director David Moss and Senior Behavioral Scientist Jamie Elsey)
What is the scale of “invasive” Lymantria dispar dispar (spongy moth) outbreaks? (Academic Collaborator Meghan Barrett)
How cost-effective is the family planning organization Family Empowerment Media (FEM)? (Senior Environmental Economist Greer Gosnell and Senior Research Manager Melanie Basnak)
Could additional funding increase the impact of the World Health Organization (WHO)’s Essential Medicines List (EML)? (Senior Researcher Jenny Kudymowa)
How have key life-saving global health research and development (R&D) hits been funded? (Research Analyst Bruce Tsai and Research Assistant Erin Braid)